The clack of a cheap keyboard echoed faintly over the low drone of ceiling fans struggling against the spring humidity.
Marcus sat hunched at his desk, elbows buried in scattered papers, shadows curling beneath his eyes like bruises.
The light above flickered—just once, enough to be noticed, not enough to be fixed.
A cold cup of coffee sweated into a napkin at the edge of his desk, untouched for the last hour.
His jaw tightened as he stared at the photocopies spread before him.
The paper edges curled like withered petals, the ink slightly smudged from the warmth of his fingers.
He could still remember it from the flash drive—A letter, not meant to outlive them, but somehow preserved like a heartbeat in a bottle.
"If you're reading this, he got to us. We were too close. Thorne isn't just a soldier. He's the architect. He built this system to be untouchable. Every shipment, every syndicate—it all traces back to him.
Trust no one. Not the department. Not the brass.
Keep looking.
And survive."
His fingers flexed, gripping a sheet tighter. It was a shipment manifest—one of dozens. But this one… this one had a sting to it.
Grimaldi Holdings – Warehouse 43C, Port of Newark.
Serial batch:
3A7-14K
9B2-61F
T41-392
N95-227
That same batch number had shown up twice before. Once on the remnants tied to his parents' final case.
And once on a shipping crate beside the trafficked girl's body in Red Hook, yesterday night.
Marcus leaned back, but only slightly. The chair's frame creaked like an old man's knees.
His eyes didn't leave the manifest. He felt the pressure build behind his sternum, a dull weight tightening with each shallow breath.
Across from him, Leo Grant sat perched in a rolling chair, leg crossed over knee, typing with an absent rhythm that only a man fluent in code could make sound casual.
The computer screen before him cycled through data clusters, encryption keys, and digital trails long since buried by someone with high-level clearance.
Leo's shirt was half-untucked, and his tie hung like a noose loosened in protest.
A nearly-empty Styrofoam cup sat on the edge of his desk, one that Marcus could smell from here—burnt, bitter coffee that had long since given up on being drinkable.
"Most of these files," Leo muttered, not looking up, "are stitched together with redactions so thick, it's like trying to read through an ink spill. But I'm seeing patterns. Dead agents. Ghost aliases. Burner accounts linked to offshore laundering. Some of these ops trace back to a South American arms ring from 2007—same time your parents were tracking Thorne's activity in the Balkans."
He paused, cracked his knuckles absently, then resumed typing.
"I'm seeing too many names that don't belong in this kind of file. Politicians. Intelligence analysts. Military advisors. It's not just Grimaldi muscle or low-level traffickers. This stuff is sewn into the system."
Marcus barely nodded.
It was deeper than he thought. And he'd thought it went pretty damn deep already.
He grabbed the manifest again, lifting it closer to the dim desk lamp. The faded location—the Port of Newark—mocked him like an unsent invitation. Warehouse 43C. The numbers felt etched into his brain now.
He spoke low, mostly to himself.
"They killed her… left her in a shipping container like she wasn't human. Same batch. Same warehouse." He exhaled slowly, each word coated in quiet fury. "This isn't a coincidence."
Leo finally turned in his chair, fixing Marcus with a look that was more concern than curiosity.
"You're thinking of going there. Alone, I'm guessing."
Marcus didn't answer immediately. His eyes wandered to the old precinct windows—fogged with grime, one cracked at the corner.
The street buzzed below, distant horns and the grumble of buses providing the city's soundtrack.
He imagined the Port of New Ark at night: massive, industrial, riddled with steel husks and shadows. A graveyard for truth.
He spoke with the calm certainty of a man already past the point of no return.
"I'm not walking away from this. Not now. That warehouse—43C—it's where it started. That's where I go."
Leo stood, his movements sharp now. He dropped his cup into the trash, where it hit the rim and rolled off, spilling brown sludge onto the floor.
"Mac, you can't just ghost protocol your way through this. I know how personal this is—I get it—but going to that warehouse without backup? Without a plan? That's not justice. That's suicide."
Marcus finally looked up, meeting his gaze and then snapped.
"This isn't just about my parents anymore, Leo. This is about every single name buried in that drive. Every file with a sealed kill order. Every girl that ended up in a box because some son of a bitch wanted to fund a black-market war! You think I can sit here and wait for IA to sign a search warrant that'll never come?"
Leo dragged a hand down his face and let out a long breath.
"I'm not saying we don't act. I'm saying we don't act stupid. Thorne's not some street thug you can cuff and toss into a cell. He's been hiding behind paper trails and fake shell corps for decades. You storm that warehouse and don't find anything? They'll paint you as a rogue cop. Or worse—you disappear, and the story never makes the news."
Marcus stood now, slow and deliberate. His hand hovered over the scattered papers before sweeping them into a single pile.
He slipped the manifest into his coat pocket. The gesture wasn't aggressive, but there was finality in it.
"You know what the worst part is, Leo?" he said, voice soft but cutting. "This precinct—it's not safe. You said it yourself. Too many names in these files shouldn't be here. I don't know who's watching, who's feeding intel up the chain, but every second we delay, Thorne gets cleaner. He's scrubbing his fingerprints while we argue."
He turned slightly, glancing toward the far side of the bullpen. An old corkboard near the homicide pinboard still bore his parents' names under an outdated cold-case header.
Faded red string, a couple of blurry Polaroids, and a notation in blue ink: Unsolved.
"You told me to be careful, Mom. But caution hasn't worked. Caution got you killed. It got that girl killed. And how many others? How many bodies have to stack up before someone finally cuts the head off the beast?"
He looked back at Leo. The man hadn't sat down. His arms were crossed now, posture rigid, gaze unreadable.
"I'm not asking you to follow me," Marcus said, tone measured. "I'm asking you to help me find the truth. If I go in and find something, anything, I'll bring it back. Evidence. Proof. Then we go public. We bury Thorne with facts, not just fury."
Leo rubbed the back of his neck, visibly torn. The cynicism in him warred with loyalty.
"I'll scrub more. See if I can find camera logs or maintenance records from 43C. But Mac… if you get caught sniffing around that port without a badge-sanctioned reason…"
Marcus's lips curled, not into a smile, but something adjacent—like resolve dressed in cynicism.
"They'll have to kill me. And if they fail, they'll wish they hadn't."
Leo looked away, shaking his head slightly. "Jesus, man. You don't make this easy."
———————————————————
Marcus moved like a shadow between the cubicles, his steps measured and quiet.
His precinct badge clipped to his hip caught a flicker of light from the ceiling, but no one paid attention—not really.
The bullpen was always loud, always moving—phones ringing, paper shuffling, the occasional bark of laughter from behind a terminal—but beneath the surface hum, Marcus noticed something else: a quiet stiffness in the room.
Cops paused just slightly longer when they caught him in their periphery. Conversations lowered or tapered off altogether.
He didn't flinch. He didn't slow.
He knew what that meant.
The files he had dug through with Leo earlier still haunted his mind, like soot clinging to the inside of his lungs.
Grimaldi Holdings. Warehouse 43C. Red Hook. That dead girl in the crate—drugged, discarded like packaging.
And then there was the serial number matching the same shipment batch involved in his parents' murder almost fifteen years ago. Different crime. Same ink trail.
He needed answers. And the precinct was supposed to be the place to get them.
At the coffee machine near the locker corridor, he spotted Officer Ryerson—burly guy, in his early fifties, gray at the temples and part of the old guard who'd walked the beat back in the late '90s.
Ryerson had done time in Records before taking a desk spot in Admin. If anyone knew about archived busts, it was him.
Marcus approached slowly, pretending to check his phone.
"Hey, Ryerson," he said casually, voice low but firm.
The officer turned, holding his paper cup under the sputtering nozzle. "Mac. What's good?"
"Working on something... trying to chase down a cold link," Marcus replied, folding his arms. "You remember those warehouse raids from '97? Grimaldi Holdings?"
Ryerson froze for a fraction of a second. The machine hissed, overfilling his cup before he jerked it away.
"That's a long time back," Ryerson said. "Why dig up mold?"
Marcus offered a polite smile. "Just something crossed my desk. A name, a manifest. Thought maybe it was worth checking what got boxed from that raid. I'd like to see if anything survived. Evidence logs, arrest reports. Maybe even old surveillance logs."
Ryerson blew on his coffee. "That case was boxed for a reason, Mac. Don't kick ghosts unless you want 'em waking up."
Marcus's smile didn't change, but his eyes hardened. "I'm not chasing ghosts. I'm chasing facts."
Ryerson shook his head slowly, backing up. "You didn't hear it from me, but you ask too many questions about that, and you'll end up assigned to Parking Enforcement in Staten Island. Or worse!"
Ryerson walked off without another word. His steps quick, deliberate.
Marcus exhaled quietly. He wasn't surprised. He just didn't expect the resistance to come so quickly, so bluntly.
"This place is supposed to be home base… a fortress for truth and accountability. That's the sales pitch they give rookies at the academy. But the higher you go, the more walls you find. And behind those walls? Skeletons wearing shields and bars."
He moved next to Records—an old converted filing room just past the east stairwell.
There, Officer Gina Carrillo sat behind the plexiglass window, chewing gum while scrolling through a digital ledger.
"Hey, Carrillo," Marcus said, tapping lightly on the counter.
She looked up, raising a brow. "Sergeant Allen. What can I do for you?"
"I need access to evidence logs tied to Grimaldi Holdings—specifically their shipping records, warehouse seizure documentation, maybe surveillance feeds if they weren't wiped."
Carrillo stared at him like he just asked for nuclear launch codes.
"Grimaldi?" she said slowly. "That's old federal junk. From before we digitized the archives."
"I know. That's why I need your help." He leaned in, lowering his voice. "Just want to see the paperwork. Nothing fancy."
Carrillo blinked and turned to her screen. A few keystrokes. Her gum popped. Then her lips curled slightly.
"Looks like that request is marked 'Pending Authorization.'"
Marcus frowned. "That fast? I just filed it an hour ago."
She shrugged. "Someone up the ladder flagged it. Could be protocol, could be… something else."
"Who flagged it?"
She didn't meet his gaze this time. "You know I can't tell you that, Mac."
He pulled back slowly. "Right. Of course."
As he walked away, he could feel the weight of her gaze on the back of his neck. Not pity. Not concern.
But caution.
"First the cold shoulders. Now bureaucratic chokeholds. I haven't even opened the lid, and already the pressure's starting. How deep does this go? Or better yet—how high?"
Back in the hallway, he caught sight of a familiar face leaning against the wall near the lockers—Lieutenant Russell Hodge, a weathered, chain-smoking officer who'd once been Mac's field training officer in the Bronx.
Back then, Hodge had been sharper, less tired. Now, he looked like a man held together by nicotine and sarcasm.
"Mac," Hodge greeted, voice gravelly. "Heard you've been poking around the graveyard shift's paperwork. Looking for bones?"
Marcus approached slowly. "Just trying to find clarity. I got names, places. But the files are sealed or 'pending.' The hell's that about?"
Hodge pulled a pack from his breast pocket, then stopped short of lighting it. "You ever heard the story of Officer Delaney?"
Marcus shook his head.
"'99. Young guy. Clean record. He stumbled on a shipping discrepancy tied to one of the docks over in Jersey. Pushed for an internal review. Less than a month later, the guy resigns. Just disappears. Moved to Montana or some shit. No one talks about it."
"What was in the discrepancy?" Marcus asked, tone sharpening.
Hodge looked at him, eyes narrowing. "That's just it. Nobody knows. Files were sanitized. Every trace wiped. Just like that."
"Let me guess," Marcus said dryly. "Grimaldi Holdings?"
Hodge didn't answer.
But he didn't have to.
Instead, he stepped in close, voice dropping to a whisper. "Whatever you're sniffin' around? Stop. People up top got long memories and short patience. You understand me?"
Marcus didn't move. His pulse thudded in his ears.
"I'm not asking for trouble," he said. "But I'm not ignoring it either. Something's wrong here, Lieutenant. The dots don't just connect—they bleed together."
Hodge stared for a moment longer, then shook his head. "Then you better be ready to bleed, too."
He turned and walked away.
Marcus stood there in the corridor, the hum of the vending machines filling the silence.
The paint on the walls was peeling. Fluorescent lights flickered overhead like a dying heartbeat.
"Every warning is just more proof. They're scared. Not of me. Of the truth. And the way they all lean away from the Grimaldis like it's cursed—like even saying the name too loud might draw lightning—that's the biggest tell of all. Someone's still sweeping the ashes. And they sure as hell don't want me digging through them."
He returned to his desk. Leo was gone, probably grabbing lunch.
Across the bullpen, a group of uniformed officers huddled near a printer, glancing his way every now and then.
The buzz of their conversation was inaudible, but the body language said enough.
Even the silence felt weaponized.
Marcus opened his drawer, pulled out a leather-bound notebook—his father's old case journal, now worn and marked by his own notes—and began cross-referencing every mention of Grimaldi-connected sites from over the years.
Red Hook. Port of Newark. Staten Island dockyards. A network of shell warehouses across the eastern seaboard.
His pen stopped over a name—"Harborlight Logistics."
Another shell company. Another possible layer.
He underlined it twice.
The Grimaldis didn't just vanish. They rebranded. Mutated. But they never left.
He stared ahead, past the glass partitions of the precinct floor. A dull ache sat behind his eyes, and his jaw clenched.
Then his phone buzzed.
Unknown Number. One message.
"They know you're looking. You've got three days before they make you stop. —A Friend."
Marcus didn't move. Didn't blink. Just stared at the message as the screen dimmed.
"Three days. That's generous. But I won't need three. Just one crack in the armor. One mistake from their end. And I'll drive a goddamn wedge through it."
He slipped the phone back into his pocket.
And got back to work.
———————————————————
A patrol log was old-school printed, smudged in places with a mix of coffee fingerprints and rushed ink.
Marcus had been poring over it for the last half hour, flipping pages at a slow, deliberate pace, pen tapping against the side of his knuckle.
The room smelled like old leather and varnished wood—his office still carried the faint scent of the generations of cops who had sat in that chair before him.
Maybe one of them had once asked the same kind of questions. Or maybe they had just kept their heads down and filed their reports.
The ticking of the overhead clock didn't help. It made the quiet feel like pressure—constant, measured, indifferent.
It was almost enough to make him forget the heaviness still hanging in his chest from the hallway whispers earlier.
The closed doors. The warnings, indirect and polite like a blade wrapped in velvet.
He'd been there long enough to know silence could be a message.
Just as he was about to skim through a suspicious-looking entry—code 72A near a closed warehouse in Hunts Point—a sharp knock echoed on the frosted glass of his office door.
"Three taps. Not too aggressive. Not shy either."
"Yeah?" Marcus called out, his voice low but firm, eyes still scanning the page in front of him.
The door creaked open, hinges groaning slightly as if unused to movement.
A figure stepped in—a man in his late twenties, neat regulation cut, dark eyes under thick brows, and a buzz of energy about him that felt just a little out of place in a building that ran on caffeine, stress, and grim resignation.
"Sergeant Allen?" the young officer asked, stepping forward with a bright smile and a neatly folded manila envelope tucked under his arm.
"I'm Officer Samir Patel. Everyone calls me Sam."
Marcus looked up finally, slowly setting the file down.
He didn't say anything right away. Instead, he gave the kid a once-over—medium build, squared shoulders, badge polished so well it practically glinted beneath the office's muted overhead light.
The kid didn't just look new to the precinct—he felt new. Not green, but fresh. Like a man who still thought the job meant something clean.
God help him.
Sam shifted, awkwardly at first, then extended a hand with a bit too much eagerness.
"Midtown transfer, sir. I put in a request for field work and just got assigned to the OCB. Heard a lot about you, to be honest."
Marcus stood slowly, his boots scraping softly against the floor, and shook the hand. A solid grip—not too hard, not clammy.
Just enough force to show confidence, but not ego. There was something in Sam's expression—a twitch of awe, maybe a touch of nervousness—but no fake polish. That counted for something.
"Hope what you heard didn't come from the brass," Marcus said flatly, sitting back down and motioning for the kid to do the same. "They've got... creative imaginations."
Sam chuckled, lowering himself into the chair across from the desk. "Not the brass. Mostly fellow patrol officers. Some called you 'the shadow that walks like a badge.' One guy said you made three arrests and filed the paperwork before he finished his sandwich."
Marcus smirked just slightly, almost involuntarily. "Is that so?"
"Yeah," Sam said, grin widening. "Also heard you've got a rep for cleaning house. Quietly. You don't make a lot of noise, but stuff happens around you."
Marcus narrowed his eyes just a little, not in suspicion—but appraisal.
He'd heard that kind of admiration before. Sometimes it was flattery. Other times, it was bait.
"Let me guess," he said, leaning forward on his elbows, "you asked for field work because you want in on the real stuff. Right?"
Sam nodded earnestly. "Yes, sir. Desk work's fine, but I didn't join the force to babysit radio chatter. I want to make a difference—actually do something. Midtown had me logging asset reports and processing parking violations."
Marcus raised a brow. "So you thought riding with the Organized Crime Bureau would be less paperwork?"
A nervous laugh escaped Sam. "Well, I figured I'd trade some paper cuts for a few bruises. I can take bruises."
There was a pause.
Marcus studied him a moment longer. No trace of sarcasm in the kid's voice. No bitterness. Just a genuine need to do. That was dangerous. Noble, maybe—but still dangerous.
"Alright, Officer Patel. Consider this your first shift with me. We don't do hero shit. We don't posture for the cameras. And we sure as hell don't chase ghosts without backup. Understood?"
Sam sat up straighter. "Understood, sir."
"He reminds me of me," Marcus thought bitterly. "Before I realized how deep the rot really went. Before the war became personal."
Marcus grabbed the patrol log again, flipping it over to where he'd stopped. "You notice anything unusual last few days? Anything off-book?"
Sam hesitated for half a second—just enough for Marcus to catch it.
"Well… something did stand out," he said, tone lowering just a notch. "I didn't know if it was worth flagging again. I mean, I already wrote it up. But it got… buried."
Marcus leaned back. "Talk."
Sam reached into the envelope and pulled out a printed incident report—one from a weapons seizure five nights ago.
He laid it flat on the desk and tapped a line halfway down the page.
"Routine bust in a storage yard on Hobart Avenue. Bronx. Tip said someone was moving unregistered firearms. When we opened one of the crates, it was labeled as agricultural equipment. But under the insulation, I saw silhouettes—long, slim. Definitely rifles. No serials. No paperwork. The rest of the report was... sanitized."
Marcus scanned the paper. Everything checked out—on the surface. But the kind of surface that had been scrubbed clean with bleach.
"You say the crates were repackaged?" Marcus asked.
"Yeah," Sam said. "Too clean. Foam padding like you'd find in electronics shipments. No grease, no dirt. It felt like someone wanted them to be found, but not too soon. Not before someone could… move things around."
Marcus looked up. "You reported it?"
"Flagged it. Twice. But it never got forwarded to Violent Crimes or Firearms. Evidence Processing marked it as cleared—labelled under misfiled 'farming machinery imports.' Total joke."
Marcus exhaled slowly, almost inaudibly. "You got photos?"
Sam reached into the envelope again. "I printed backups. Didn't want them getting 'lost.'"
Smart.
Marcus took the photos, spreading them out across the desk like cards.
His eyes narrowed as he examined the grainy black-and-whites: wooden crates, clean cuts through packing foam, long shadows tucked beneath tarp sheets—shapes far too familiar to be farming tools.
"Thorne's ghost leaves fingerprints."
"Always has."
"Good instincts," Marcus murmured.
Sam blinked. "Sir?"
Marcus didn't answer right away. He looked up, that steel tension in his jaw tightening.
For a moment, something flickered behind his eyes—a weight. A memory. A scar.
"You trust your gut?" Marcus asked, voice lower now, almost a test.
"Yes," Sam said without hesitation.
"Good," Marcus said. "You're gonna need it."
The office was silent for a beat. Outside the frosted window, the hum of precinct life continued—phones ringing, distant footsteps, radios chattering in broken codes.
But inside that room, something had shifted. A thread had been pulled.
Sam sat up again. "Is this… is this about something bigger, sir?"
Marcus didn't answer that directly.
Instead, he gathered the photos, the report, and the logbook and set them aside with quiet deliberation.
"You just got assigned to me, Patel. Don't go thinking too loud."
Sam nodded, but there was a gleam in his eyes now—more than curiosity. Intuition.
Marcus didn't know if he was ready to trust someone again. Too many masks. Too many betrayals.
But Sam? The kid might just be reckless enough and sharp enough to hold his own in the storm to come.
He reached into his desk, pulled out a smaller notepad, and slid it across.
"Write down everything you remember. Exact layout. People on site. Chain of custody. We'll go from there."
Sam didn't hesitate. "Yes, sir."
As the young officer began scribbling notes, Marcus leaned back, eyes unfocused, heart slow and deliberate in his chest.
"They buried the truth once. Lit fires to hide the bones. But the smoke never really fades."
And now, maybe—just maybe—he wasn't walking through it alone anymore.
———————————————————
"Hey, Mac."
The voice was unmistakable—Leo Grant, walking in with a slow, deliberate stride that always seemed just on the edge of sarcasm.
He waved a plastic to-go coffee cup in greeting as he slipped into Marcus's office without knocking.
Marcus didn't bother to look up at first. He had his hands folded under his chin, elbows resting on a folder thick with patrol reports and asset logs.
The light from the afternoon sun cut across his desk in a streak, casting long shadows over the beige walls and turning the half-empty bottle of aspirin by the monitor into a glinting monument to stress.
Marcus sighed, finally dragging his eyes from the screen. "You knock for Reyes but not me. I see how it is."
Leo smirked. "She yells. You just glare. I prefer glared-at silence over verbal homicide."
"Get to it," Marcus said, already motioning toward the seat opposite his desk. "You don't stroll in here for small talk."
Leo tossed the coffee on Marcus's desk—black, no sugar, just the way he liked it—and set a worn USB stick down next to it like it was evidence in a murder trial.
"I cracked the encryption on that flash drive," Leo said, tapping the USB. "Took me hours. Someone didn't just want it hidden—they buried the damn thing under layers of false directories, shell files, and time-stamped loops."
Marcus leaned forward, all jokes stripped from his face.
Leo nodded, eyes narrowing. "There was metadata inside. Old, dusty stuff. I mean late '90s tagging protocols. But underneath, there were a few hidden filenames—not documents, but references. Pointers."
"To what?" Marcus asked, voice dropping.
Leo reached into his coat and pulled out a tablet, swiping through folders until he stopped on one screen. "Asset identifiers. Think military logistics. Numbers tied to shipments—probably black book stuff. Nothing directly listed, just codes. But one of them matched something I saw last week."
He paused, eyes scanning Marcus. "You remember that weapons seizure on Hobart Avenue? The one Patel flagged?"
Marcus gave a slow nod. "The crates marked 'farm equipment.' Rifles packed under packing insulation."
"Yeah," Leo said, spinning the tablet toward Marcus. "Same asset tag. Same fake company name on the shipping manifest—Altrax Global Logistics. The shell company's registered in Delaware under three layers of holding firms, and guess what? The oldest founding date goes back to 1996."
Marcus stared at the screen, his lips thinning. The code burned into his vision—#AGL-XB9-001-LS.
He knew that file tag. He remembered seeing it once, many years ago, in his father's old notebook before he knew what he was looking at. Back then, he thought it was some bureaucratic jargon. Nothing more.
Leo kept going, his voice losing its usual sarcasm. "There's more. Cross-referencing the metadata from the flash drive with NYPD's recent seizure reports… that same asset ID appears again. Twice in the last four months. Once in Red Hook, once in Queensbridge."
Marcus's voice was low, sharp. "The same rifle models?"
"Same make. Same serial ranges. Military-grade. Not civilian kits. Definitely not black market assembly line crap."
Marcus turned in his chair and looked out the narrow window behind him. The city beyond was bathed in a soft, golden haze.
The hum of traffic seemed distant, a world away from the storm building in his mind.
"So this isn't over. The blood trail my parents followed didn't just vanish into the ground—it coiled around the roots of this city. Alive. Breathing. Feeding. And it never stopped. Never even slowed."
"They killed him to keep it quiet… but the machine kept turning."
He clenched his jaw, and when he looked back at Leo, something in his eyes had hardened.
Leo noticed. "You okay?"
"No," Marcus said. "But I understand now. This wasn't just about the past. It's a goddamn echo chamber. The same weapons they chased back then… they're moving again, under the same names, same networks. Which means the people behind it didn't retire. They adapted."
Leo sat back, folding his arms. "Makes you wonder how deep this goes. Because if this shell company's still operational… someone's maintaining it. Funding it. Protecting it."
"Or someone got the keys to daddy's kingdom after the funeral," Marcus muttered. "Which means Thorne didn't dismantle his empire—he franchised it."
He stood up abruptly, walking toward the window. His fingers tapped against the sill rhythmically.
His pulse was racing, and his mind was spinning with fragments—old conversations with his father, documents that made no sense back then, training drills that felt too specific, warnings from old friends long out of uniform.
Leo spoke again, gentler this time. "Mac… this isn't just about your parents anymore. This thing's bleeding into today's streets. These rifles—they're being used now. Not just stored."
Marcus didn't turn around. "You think I don't know that?"
Leo nodded slowly. "Then what do we do?"
Marcus turned back to him, eyes sharper than glass. "We follow the crates."
Leo raised a brow. "Easier said than done. The evidence logs show the shipment was transferred—twice. First to a regional depot in Queens, then to federal holding."
"Feds," Marcus repeated, disgust threading his tone. "So they either buried it, or they're in on it."
Leo didn't respond. He didn't need to.
Marcus grabbed a notepad from his drawer and scribbled something down. "Get me everything you can on Altrax. Founders, board members, legal trails. I don't care if it's just a janitor from '96. Someone knew what this company was really for."
"I already pulled court filings. Everything's squeaky clean on the surface," Leo said, standing up. "But you know me—I'll go deeper. Just… if I end up on a no-fly list by tomorrow, maybe bring me a sandwich in federal lockup."
Marcus offered a dry chuckle. "You like yours with mustard, right?"
"Dijon, you philistine."
Leo turned, pausing in the doorway. "Hey… your dad—he wasn't crazy. He was just too early. You're not."
Marcus didn't answer right away. Then, as Leo walked off, he said quietly, "No… I'm just late."
The door clicked shut, and silence settled back over the office. The golden hour had shifted; the sun dipped lower, coloring the room in amber and shadow.
Marcus sat back down and stared at the USB drive Leo had left behind.
He picked it up, rolling it between his fingers.
"This thing almost disappeared. Like everything else tied to them. To Thorne. To the rot."
"But not this time."
He opened the desk drawer and pulled out the leather-bound journal that once belonged to his father.
The pages were creased, yellowing, fragile from age but fireproof in purpose.
He flipped through it until he reached a page filled with notations—asset IDs, shipping codes, unfamiliar company names.
He paused.
There it was again:
3A7-14K
9B2-61F
T41-392
N95-227
Same code.
Same ghosts.
Marcus leaned forward, resting his elbows on the desk. His eyes stayed locked on the journal.
"This isn't about revenge anymore. It's about intervention. It's about stopping what's still happening—before another rookie flags a crate and ends up buried beneath red tape or worse. Sam stumbled on something too big for rookies. Too big for me, even."
"But that's the thing about machines, right? You find the gear turning everything else… and you smash it."
He reached for his phone and sent a message to Samir Patel:
"Get ready. We're going to pay Hobart Avenue another visit."
He added another to Leo:
"Dig until it hurts. If they buried it, I want the shovel."
Marcus set the phone down and looked around the office. The walls, once dull and institutional, suddenly felt like they were closing in with secrets.
And for the first time in a long while, he felt the weight of clarity, not just grief.
Not just pain.
But purpose.
"This time… we end it."
Marcus stepped through the precinct's double doors and let them swing shut behind him with a dull thud.
For a moment, the heavy steel muffled the low chatter and clicking keyboards inside, wrapping him in the kind of stillness you only noticed after a storm of motion and voices.
The air outside hit him like a slap—sun-warmed concrete radiating heat through the soles of his boots, the sky a bleached canvas that made him squint.
The city didn't rest, not even in the late afternoon lull. Sirens warbled a few blocks off, distant and impersonal.
Someone was honking aggressively down the avenue. A dog barked across the street like it had something to prove.
Samir Patel was leaning against the iron handrail beside the steps, the front of his uniform shirt untucked, one boot on the lowest step like he was posing for a recruitment poster if the department had a more casual dress code.
A bag of sunflower seeds crinkled in his hand, the salty shells spit expertly to the side, forming a tiny pile near the curb.
"Sun's cookin' me alive, Mac," Sam grumbled, glancing at his phone and shielding the screen with his hand.
"I swear, we weren't made for heat in this line of work. We should have air-conditioned armor or some Blade Runner-style humidity suits or something."
Marcus descended two steps and stood beside him. The sunlight reflected off a nearby SUV's windshield, stabbing his retinas.
He let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding, rolling his shoulders until the leather holster creaked under his jacket.
"You'd complain in a snowstorm too," Marcus muttered, not unkindly.
Sam shrugged. "True, but at least you can layer up in the cold. In this? You just marinate in your own regrets."
Marcus managed a thin smirk. Not quite a laugh, but close.
Behind them, the precinct thrummed with its usual low-energy chaos—radios crackling, phones ringing, the sound of a printer endlessly churning out paper in some overworked back office.
Leo was still upstairs, fingers flying over a keyboard, sweat dotting his brow like he was trying to crack into the Pentagon instead of assembling a burner-safe version of the decrypted files.
That flash drive had done more than open a door—it had pulled the rug out from under Marcus's world and shown him the mold growing beneath the floorboards.
And now, standing outside, squinting at the skyline, it felt like everything had tilted.
He adjusted his collar and glanced sideways at Sam, who was now chewing thoughtfully, staring off into traffic like he could see more than just cars and people.
"You ever feel like the job's not the job anymore?" Marcus asked.
Sam turned toward him, chewing paused mid-bite. "Meaning?"
Marcus's gaze drifted to the passing flow of yellow cabs and delivery trucks.
"Like the badge isn't about protection. Or truth. Like it's just… branding. A marketing logo they slap on our chests so the public doesn't panic."
Sam spat a shell and gave a half-nod. "Yeah. More times than I'd like to admit. My uncle was NYPD in the nineties. Told me the badge was supposed to mean something. Stand for something."
"It did," Marcus said, voice heavy. "And it can again. But not like this. Not if we're playing blind while people like General Augustus Thorne and his circle pull strings behind closed doors."
Sam looked at him, brow furrowed.
"So what now?"
Marcus didn't answer right away. He inhaled deeply, catching the familiar urban stew—hot asphalt, exhaust fumes, faint hints of coffee and falafel from a cart parked across the street.
The scent grounded him, reminded him that this city, in all its rotting glory, still had people worth fighting for.
"We follow the thread," Marcus finally said. "Leo's pulling the files together. We've got names. Shipment IDs. Shell companies. My father was tracking this same setup thirty years ago. It's still moving. Still infecting."
Sam's jaw tensed.
"You think someone inside's helping them?"
Marcus gave him a look. "I know someone is. This stuff doesn't move itself. It's too organized. Too clean. We're not talking about some amateur-run street gang. We're talking black-market logistics, military-grade weapons, government-grade cover-ups."
Sam didn't say anything. The sunflower seeds were forgotten now, his hand closed into a fist around the bag. He nodded slowly.
"Then we dig," he said.
Marcus didn't respond, but he appreciated the resolve in Sam's voice.
Young, maybe. Impulsive. But not soft. Not where it counted.
From the corner of his eye, Marcus saw a pigeon hop across the sidewalk, pecking at something invisible.
The heat waves shimmered off the hood of a parked squad car.
A couple passed them—tourists, by the look of their camera straps—oblivious to the undercurrent humming beneath the city's surface.
Marcus's mind drifted, unbidden, to his father's voice—gravelly and measured, always calm when he explained tactics or ethics at the dinner table.
"Justice, Marcus, is rarely delivered in the light. It's clawed from the dark, inch by inch. And you better be ready to bleed for it."
He hadn't understood it back then. But now?
He understood perfectly.
He turned back toward the precinct, the shadows from the flagpole now longer across the concrete.
Inside, Leo would still be hammering away, verifying links, building redundancies, encrypting everything six ways from Sunday. He could trust Leo.
And Sam, for all his running mouth and rookie nervous energy, had never once balked when things got real. That counted for something.
Still, the circle was small. Smaller than it should be.
"Mac," Sam said, softer now. "You look like you're staring at a firing squad."
Marcus blinked. "Maybe I am."
A beat passed. Then another. Somewhere down the block, a city bus hissed and groaned to a stop, the doors opening with a hydraulic sigh.
"You ever think about walking away?" Sam asked, not looking at him this time. "Just… dropping the badge. Letting someone else figure this shit out."
Marcus let the question hang in the thick, sunlit air. It wasn't the first time someone had asked him.
It wasn't even the first time he'd asked himself.
"I've thought about it," he admitted. "But every time I get close, I see another mother burying her kid. Another junkie with a ghost behind his eyes. Another body dumped like garbage because someone rich decided that life was cheap."
He exhaled. Slow. Measured.
"I walk away, who picks it up? Boone? Grimm? Thorne's next puppet?"
Sam nodded, chewing on his thoughts now.
"I'm in," he said, finally. "Whatever comes. I'm in."
Marcus clapped a hand on his shoulder. Not hard. Just enough.
"We'll need more than that soon," Marcus said. "We're going to be outgunned. Outnumbered. And once this goes wide, it's not gonna be pretty."
A breeze stirred the heat, kicking up grit that swirled around their boots.
"I didn't sign up for pretty," Sam replied. "I signed up for real."
Marcus almost smiled. Almost.
"Good," he said. "Because real's about to get ugly."
Inside the precinct, a phone rang twice and went silent. The kind of silence that carried weight.
Inside, Leo was preparing the first solid strike in what would become a campaign—not just of justice, but of vengeance.
But Marcus didn't move. Not yet. He stayed rooted there on the steps, letting the noise of the city wash over him.
For the first time in weeks, he wasn't staring at a void.
He had names. Leads. A trail.
"Justice doesn't live in courtrooms," Marcus thought.
"It lives in graves. I just need to find the right ones."
A shadow passed overhead—just a pigeon, coasting down onto the steps. But it chilled him all the same.
He didn't know it yet.
Didn't know what would come next.
Didn't know that by chasing this case…
…he was going to start a war.